During the height of the Iraq War in 2005, Sergeant Karolyn Smith, a machine gunner for the 127th Military Police, was on patrol one night in a Humvee military truck when her vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.

"I knew that I was on fire, and badly injured," Sgt. Smith told PCMag, "But luckily adrenaline kicked in, masking the severe shock and reality of what just happened to my life, my body and my career in the Armed Forces."

Several years later, after multiple spine surgeries, she was treating her chronic pain with a high level dosage of painkillers and desperately seeking a solution (or an end to it all).

"I was about to become another awful statistic of the opioid epidemic, in the worst possible way when a friend stepped in and told me about Operation Mend," she said. "When I called them, for the first time, in over a decade of no one really listening to me, they said, 'We get it, we will help, we will walk with you to your medical appointments and get you through this.'"

Operation Mend is a partnership between UCLA Health, the US military, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. There's no direct charge for the patient; insurance is billed directly.

"Operation Mend started back in 2007 as the brainchild of Ronald A. Katz and Maddie Katz...after they visited Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC), a leading burn and rehabilitation center in San Antonio, Texas," Operation Mend Director Melanie Gideon told PCMag.

The Katz Family provided the initial founding funds for Operation Mend; many other donors have joined them over the past decade, including a recent award of $15.7 million from the Wounded Warrior Project.

"This type of patient- and family-centered, high-touch care for traumatically injured service personnel had not been done in partnership with a large academic medical center in this way before" Gideon pointed out. "In fact, there were a lot of barriers, initially, when working with the military, because, understandably, one of their mottos is 'We take care of our own.'"

Eventually they worked out a system whereby Operation Mend takes "all of the traditional care planning burdens off of the warrior and his or her family to help them focus on what's important—healing," Gideon said.

"We even meet our wounded service members at LAX, at the gate, so they don't have to navigate that infamous L.A. airport craziness," said Gideon. "They are often brought out with their family members and then driven to Tiverton House, a UCLA Health hotel, so the family can recover as a unit. Each day they are picked up, and escorted for everything that needs to happen to get them through their recovery. Every patient's needs are different, but our gold standards are never compromised, from MRIs, to reconstructive surgery, and any after-care check-ups: our arms are open for them."

As you might expect, there's a lot of advanced technology on the surgical table and beyond. Lockheed Martin donated a $2 million telehealth center (above). Gideon's team is also revamping its Salesforce system to allow for integrated scheduling and tracking apps. This will effectively merge data housed on multiple platforms, including the VTOC Patient Portal, to provide real-time data analytics, including predicted outcomes and eventually, clinical care guidance.

To date, 308 wounded warriors, including Sgt. Smith, have benefited from Operation Mend. If that number doesn't sound very high, each service person often undergoes multiple surgeries over the course of a year. Many have replacement prosthetics, others undergo reanimation of facial muscles after fourth-degree burns, and everyone has follow-up treatments and corresponding psychological care.

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Since her tour of duty, Sgt. Smith has been awarded the Army Commendation Medal, Combat Action Badge, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Iraqi Freedom Medal, and is awaiting a Congressional review to receive the Purple Heart. As one of Operation Mend's Wounded Warriors, she's a grateful recipient of its advanced "bionic" skill set today.

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